Monday, August 1, 2011

Relatively. Tomorrow is my last day teaching at high school in Japan and I will finish my term with the JET Program. I have already moved out of my apartment and am now staying at a friend's house until late August when I go to Nagoya for a two week teacher training course. THEN, I will finally be in a permanent place of living I can temporarily call my own. So, I probably won't be making any posts until sometime in early-mid September. I guess I'm writing this to let people know I haven't just dropped off the side of the blogging scene never to return, and they should check back in September for new posts.

This is all very strange and I admit I'm feeling very adverse to a lot of the changes happening in this transition now. For the next three weeks I won't have work and will be staying with friends. But how could I complain? Isn't that awesome? And then I go to teacher training for two weeks, which will surely have some annoying or boring points, but I doubt it will really be difficult, and will be in a city I've never been before. Isn't that awesome too? For someone who always talks up "changes", "transitions", and "the Unknown", I'm feeling a bit like a baby with all this. All I really want to do is be in my apartment and in a schedule were I can regularly begin projects of martial arts and writing as well as whatever new studies come into my life. I'm really good at making new big plans, and even carrying them out with the proper amount of discipline when it counts, but the waiting time is a whole different matter ... but the idea is it's not really "waiting" is it. What is waiting anyway? Since were always doing something, even if it's waiting for something, to generally state we're in a time of waiting is a bit inaccurate and just leads to people not seeing the moment so clearly. Maybe it's all semantics. Maybe there's nothing at all.

I did see a cool movie last night though featuring one of the best martial arts movie super stars of our age, Tony Jaa in "Ong Bak 3". Since I rented it in Japan, there was no English dubbing or subtitles, but I couldn't think of a better movie that didn't need dialogue. Seriously, I would say about 20 minutes of the hour and a half movie were used for dialogue. The rest were usually 10-15 minute fight scenes that were generally awesome. So, get some beer and check it out with some of your budo buddies.

Anyway, I look forward to posting regularly in September, and will do my best to survive the summer madness.

About Me

Toyama City, Toyama Prefecture. A land by the sea separated from the rest by walls of some of the tallest mountains in Japan. Here I formally study aikido and kyudo, and informally practice whatever else is relevant. Time away from work is spent exploring the forests and mountains of my foreign home on a mountainbike, and farther places of interest by whatever means. Reports of such a life are recorded here. Join my experiences and please contact if you like.